The communist regime in Cuba sentenced 22-year-old Mayelín Rodríguez Prado to 15 years in prison this week for filming peaceful protests in the town of Nuevitas in August 2022.
Rodríguez Prado, sentenced alongside a group of more than a dozen Cubans who had also participated in Nuevitas protests, received a combined 15-year sentence — the highest among the group — for the alleged crimes of “continued enemy propaganda” and “sedition.”
The 22-year-old Cuban was arrested hours after the August 2022 Nuevitas protests, when hundreds of Cuban citizens peacefully protested against the Castro regime and demanded an end to months of near-endless daily electrical blackouts and other inhumane conditions.
Rodríguez Prado filmed the Nuevitas protests and published the footage on her social media accounts. One of the videos, livestreamed by Rodríguez Prado, showed Cuban police officers beating Cuban citizen José Armando Torrente and three 11-year-old girls, including Torrente’s daughter.
Videos of the girls describing the situation also surfaced on social media. One of the girls, presumed to be Torrente’s daughter, described attempting to fight police officers herself to defend her father.
“I was holding on to my dad, and she was holding on to my dad, and then, to arrest my dad, the police had to hit us,” the girl said. “I also hit them because they hit me.”
Rodríguez Prado was able to speak with the Cuban Council of Human Rights Rapporteurs (CRDHC), a non-government organization, while serving her sentence in Granja Cinco, a maximum-security female prison located in Camagüey.
In the interview, published by Martí Noticias on Thursday, Rodríguez Prado accused the Castro regime’s prosecution of presenting several pieces of falsified evidence in her trial. She also denounced that the prosecution denied the physical abuse of police officers against the minors despite the video evidence she produced. The officers also claimed that she filmed the girls without their parents’ permission.
“They say no, that it was a lie and that I did it in the absence of the girl’s mother and aunt,” Rodríguez Prado said. “Her mother was present there, it is her who directly confirms that I asked her permission.”
“They are telling me that at 9:30 at night, the day I was arrested, I was at the government headquarters saying things and inciting people to take out stones. At that time I was in prison,” she continued.
Martí Noticias reported that, despite her lengthy sentence, Rodríguez Prado said she felt calm.
“The papers say that it was not a coincidence that I played a leading role in the events. I am calm, this is not going to last 15 years,” she said.
Rodríguez Prado warned during the interview about the situation of one of the others sentenced by the Castro regime for having peacefully protested in Nuevitas. She asserted that Fray Pascual Claro Valladares, a Cuban man sentenced to 10 years in prison for “sedition,” tried to take his own life after learning of the sentence. According to Rodríguez Prado, Claro Valladares has already been returned to the Cerámica Roja prison, where he is serving his sentence.
Rodríguez Prado is among the group of more than a dozen Cubans convicted in relation to the Nuevitas protests. Among the other Cuban citizens who received lengthy sentences stands José Armando Torrente Muñoz, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison for charges including “sedition,” “attacks,” “resistance,” and “sabotage.”
“We need to make visible the situation we are living in, and what we are facing,” Torrente Muñoz reportedly said.
Cuban citizen Yennis Artola Del Sol was sentenced to eight years in prison on “enemy propaganda of a continuing nature” charges for having taken a photograph of a sign that read “Patria y Vida” (“Homeland and Life”) during the Nuevita protests.
Patria y Vida is one of the most emblematic slogans of the modern Cuban anti-communist movement and was prominent during the historic July 2021 protests, in which tens of thousands of Cubans took the streets of dozens of Cuban cities to demand an end to six decades of communism.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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